Kintsugi: Gold and Clay
by Riverside Sakura
Summary: Sequel to Black on Silver. Fate had struck, and they had lost everything. Sephiroth is losing his mind and Hana sits on Wutai's throne alone. Both are poised to fulfill the roles determined for them before their births: a puppet empress, destined to die, and a destroyer of worlds, lost within the will of a calamity. The only Escape lies in the secret that started it all. READ NOTE
1. Chapter 1

Chapter One: The Seeds of Mutiny

Everyone at ShinRa knew exactly what happened when you gave a SOLDIER a beer.

In fact, they were so familiar with it, that substantial prevention measures had long since been implemented. The strongest drink on the SOLDIER floor was coffee, and every other drink-containing machine in the building had posters clearly outlining the penalties ascribed to both offenders and accomplices. Despite the eye-rolling the SOLDIERs gave, it was a standard issue to be thoroughly hashed out at every employee training meeting.

However, because it was sometimes difficult to keep a raging SOLDIER from his spirits no matter what preventative action you took, there was a sniper or two from the Turks always on call to immediately sedate any offenders. It was just easier for everyone that way. ShinRa had also learned very quickly to set aside a hefty chunk of the PR fund – in cash – to mitigate inevitable damages.

It was something about SOLDIER metabolisms – booze stuck in their systems for weeks and caused hangovers of a severity known to drive men mad. While the exact physiological explanation had thus far managed to elude even the top scientific minds at ShinRa, what everyone _did_ know was that in the weeks of inebriation, hell was more likely to break loose than not.

The immediate concerns were three-fold. First was that a SOLDIER had gotten drunk in the first place. The second was that the PR money budgeted for rogue-SOLDIER related catastrophes had been used up after an unfortunate incident at the company's New Year's party.

The third and most disturbing was that Genesis Rhapsodos was a _smart_ drunk, and in spite of – or perhaps _because_ of - his intoxication, he had incinerated the entire supply of sedatives that might have been used to stop his rampage.

Genesis was unique in that he could usually hold a glass or two, unlike most SOLDIERs. Rumor had it that he had once chugged a whole bottle of champagne at a company party and had done nothing stranger than usual. But from the way he lugged himself through the halls of the SOLDIER floor – sans-shirt and shoes, brandishing an open bottle like a war banner, and singing loud enough to wake the dead - it was clear to see that he had hit the bottle way beyond his capacity to handle.

The majority of SOLDIERs had been roused from their bunks, watching the scene unfold. They had been drawn in by innocent curiosity, but now were now held silent and frozen by simultaneous repulsion, fascination, and terror.

"They're going to kill meeeeeeeee," Genesis sang, waving an open bottle with a distinctly foreign label in the air (he was much too refined for the common beer). "They're going to kill meeeeee…." He held out every last note until a hiccup cut it short. The liquor sloshed on his hair and down his bare chest unheeded. Better there than in his mouth, his dumbfounded brothers-in-arms all silently thought to themselves as they mutely observed. "ShinRa-hic-is going to kill meeeeeeee…"

Drenched, half-naked, and well out of his mind, his dirge continued, and everyone was too terrified to do anything but stare. Genesis was volatile enough when he was sober. Plastered, this ticking time-bomb's potential for devastation went from level frag grenade to level nuclear.

"They're going to kill meeee-hic-eeeee…." He began to giggle like an enamored schoolgirl as he took another swig. "They are!" he insisted, thrusting the bottle at one of the men as if it was now his rapier. At least with the motion more of the alcohol fell on the floor where it could do no more harm. "And heehee…they'll kill you too! They'll kill _all_ of us!"

For some reason, this was hysterical, and he collapsed to the ground writhing from his own joke.

It was clear at this point that the Turks had jumped ship and were probably safely bunkered down somewhere. The men shifted their eyes in silent panic. Genesis's affinity for fire was no secret, he still had his materia on him, and alcohol was flammable.

"Oooohhh…" Genesis sighed, making himself comfortable lying on his stomach on the ground and lapping up a bit of his spilled happiness from the floor. "I know you don't believe me. No one does. Mmmm." He stroked the floor with his fingers, drawing little circles on the tile. "But they will. And they'll do it soon. Decommission, they're calling it. Mmmmm…yes. Permanent-hic-decommission."

Someone in the back made a break for it. All the prayers of the men went with that silent hero.

"They'll kill Seph first…make an example, ya know? But I'll bet they save some of 'im. Maybe his muscles will be used to make the-hic-new war robots Scarlet wants or maybe he'll end up as one of Hojo's toys. So it'll be just like old times, you see? He'll still be killing for the company. You can't escape SOLDIER…even when you're dead!"

Genesis leapt to his feet and was screaming now. With a flare, the materia in his belt ignited, and his body was wreathed in flames with a great _whoosh_. The trail of liquor he left flashed as the flames lashed down the path in one searing breath. The men jumped back, fast but not fast enough. There were several howls as uniforms and hair caught fire.

"We'll all be like that!" Genesis screamed from inside the flames. "SOLDIER is dead! _We are dead_. The only choice left to us is whether we will die inside or outside of ShinRa! We'll all DIE! DIE! DIE! EVEN AFTER THAT WE. WILL. NEVER. HIC. ESCAPE—"

The fires hissed their last, savage breaths as Genesis suddenly, literally froze.

The silence was sweet after the roar of the flames and Genesis's terrible howling. Eyes wide, the men admired the perfectly cast Blizzard spell that had immobilized the threat, making a perfectly detailed ice-sculpture of the half-naked, drunken lunatic, bent over and holding his head in his hands, mouth still grotesquely open and round in a silent shout.

"There is nothing more to see," Angeal said, deadpan, brandishing a fire extinguisher. Foam sprayed as he loosed a few spurts at the smoking SOLDIER beside him.

"You may return to your quarters," Sephiroth finished, left hand still sparking blue with remnants of the spell.

The men obeyed, but not without quiet murmurs and several looks back. Genesis had done his terrible job spectacularly. Sephiroth and Angeal could try to hush it up, but no amount of reassurance would extinguish all the doubt that the spectacle had caused. Genesis made scenes all the time, but not _this_ kind of scene. Everyone knew that this time it was different. This time, there was truth behind his drunken words.

For better or worse, the seeds of mutiny had been planted.

* * *

"Well," Angeal said, tiredly rapping his knuckles on the still-frozen skull of his redheaded friend, "I hope he had his fun, because he's not going to be seeing the light of day anytime soon."

"If you can actually manage to keep him confined, please let me know how it's done," Sephiroth said.

Angeal grunted. "He really did it this time."

Sephiroth hummed a low, quiet agreement.

Angeal salvaged one of the several discarded bottles and made a face. "Foreign stuff. Expensive. He would have had to specially order it. This was premeditated." Angeal threw the bottle over his shoulder and let it shatter against the wall.

"He always did love a show."

"It's going to be weeks before he can get this out of his system," Angeal said. "Maybe a few days at the very best, if we get him on dialysis."

"Hmph. Either way, we will be doing his paperwork."

"…He _definitely_ did this on purpose."

Angeal and Sephiroth stared at the mute ice-statue in mutual contempt. "I do not envy him of the imminent hangover," Sephiroth said dryly.

"Serves him right. Thaw him out now, I want to yell at him the exact moment that his headache sets in."

"I rather prefer him this way," Sephiroth said, picking up his frozen friend with one arm around the iced waist and proceeded to haul him down the hallway. "Easier to transport, and quieter. You can yell at him while he's hooked up to the dialysis machine. He's an idiot if he thinks he can play hooky for two whole weeks."

"He's an idiot regardless," Angeal murmured under his breath. "But you are right."

But the problem that both Angeal and Sephiroth could ignore was that Genesis had been too.

After several minutes through empty hallways, Angeal took his turn hauling their friend-shaped block of ice. Sephiroth relinquished it without comment. Together, they walked through the silent halls of the SOLDIER floor, footsteps echoing down the corridors. It had always been a hollow, lonely place to be at this hour, but with the pall hanging over SOLDIER, the feeling wasn't just rampant at night anymore.

"You think the men will brush it off?" Angeal said quietly. "Genesis was soundly wasted. We could blame it on the alcohol."

Sephiroth's eyes narrowed. "They're not stupid. They feel the danger too. All Genesis did was throw more fuel on the fire." He quickened his pace to summon the elevator with a brisk swipe of his ID.

Angeal lagged behind, weighed down by more than just Genesis's dead weight. Carved into the wall between the two elevators was an enormous SOLDIER logo. Angeal stared at it and could not help but reflect on the situation once again. Once, that insignia had been a second symbol of his honor, as much of who he was as his Buster Sword.

He could not hold back a sigh. "Is Genesis right?" Angeal asked his friend. "Is SOLDIER dead? Are we really just left to choose whether we die with the company or fighting it?"

The silver general said nothing, and Angeal cast a wary eye his way. Sephiroth had a strange, sinister snarl on his lips, and from his lips came a laugh that was not his own.

Angeal lunged for Sephiroth's right arm, where he knew the bangle housing the colorless materia was. "Seph!" he called, loud and strong. He did not have to see his friend's eyes through the veil of silver bangs to know his pupils would be dilated to slits, that they would be glowing with a light from something far more foreign, potent, and malicious than mako.

The colorless materia let out a small burst of milky light.

The snarl vanished. For a moment, all was tersely still. It was over as quickly as it had begun.

"Thank you, Angeal," Sephiroth said in his normal, cold and composed voice. He was back.

Angeal still held to the bangle. "Seph—"

"In response to your question, nothing has changed. Nothing except the name of the enemy. We are SOLDIERs. We do what we were designed to do."

Angeal sighed and readjusted Genesis in his arm. "Right," he said. "We fight."

"Indeed."

The elevator arrived with a _ding_ and Sephiroth stepped inside. Angeal barely had time to lug Genesis in before the doors closed on them. He shot Sephiroth a look as they began to descend – he could have held the doors – but Sephiroth wasn't paying attention. His eyes were focused on the elevator buttons, brows furrowed, corners of his thin lips tilted down.

Angeal had nothing to say. This was the second time this week that he had slipped like that. Sephiroth had never given any details about either what exactly was ailing him or how the materia fixed it, but Angeal thanked Gaia that whatever that mystery materia was doing was fixing whatever was happening to his friend.

"It will just take time, I'm sure," Angeal tried. Just like all materia, this one had to be mastered, right? Its effectiveness would grow with more use and practice.

"Time?" Sephiroth said, and he was distinctly frowning now.

They arrived on the medical floor and Sephiroth grabbed Genesis from Angeal, taking off so quickly as to nearly leave Angeal behind in the elevator. Sephiroth wasted no time, simultaneously melting the ice off one of Genesis's arms as he slapped the ice-block on a gurney. "Start him on dialysis," he commanded a nearby nurse, pointing to the single, defrosted arm. "Once he's hooked up, I'll defrost him the rest of the way so he doesn't bolt."

"Will he need to be…restrained, sir?"

"Most likely. I assume I don't need to tell you that the standard straps will be ineffective."

"Ah. I will inform the staff."

Angeal shook his head. Sephiroth was back to business. He would be all right, especially now that Genesis had given him an additional problem to solve. Lately, the more tasks he had to drown himself in, the better off he was. Distractions were a vital part of his life now. It was when he had a lull in work that the shadows started to creep back.

The creaky wheels of Genesis's gurney kept Angeal from hearing the soft _pop_ as another hair-thin fissure appeared on the surface of the colorless materia, and he did not see that as it appeared, Sephiroth staggered and his pupils dilated dangerously thin once again.


	2. Chapter 2

A/N: I have no excuse except that the one who was my drive and inspiration to write is gone. But I want to try to find my writing voice again. I hope I can.

* * *

Chapter Two: Haunted

She was called the Silent Empress.

Formally, there was little the court could do to force her from her isolation. The law granted her a month to officially grieve the passing of her grandfather, but no royal in recorded history had ever grieved like this before. She sent everyone away, even her ladies-in-waiting, and refused everything from coronation gifts and visits to official parcels. She was unreachable, spending her days and nights in her quarters, accompanied only by a peasant man who sat patiently, in mutual silence, at her side.

Her plight captured the heart of the world. On both continents, everyone spoke of all that she must be suffering behind closed doors.

It was the perfect excuse.

No one knew that Hana's days and nights were spent writing. Hour after hour, by candlelight at night, her brush flew across the paper. She never moved her eyes or hand from the parchment, character after character of her native tongue spilling effortlessly to fill lines, pages, and then volumes.

Hana knew she had much to grieve. She had lost everything she had ever had. But there was no time.

And the harder she wrote, the farther the lengthening shadows stayed from her mind.

Pa put his hand on hers, gently stilling her brush and teasing it from her rigid grip. Hana's fingers hardly knew how to take any other position than the one needed to write, but Pa eased and lengthened each finger in turn before setting her hand on the table with a tired pat. "It is midnight," he said.

"There is too much to be done," she said and reached for the brush again, but it was not there. She found it in Pa's hand.

"Rest, Hana."

Hana's eyes strayed to her futon, only a few steps' distance away and still unreachable. The pain in her leg flared angrily and she felt bile rise hot in her throat.

 _Helpless_.

"I command you to return my brush."

Pa looked at her with eyes heavy and sad, hooded with dusky brows drawn inward and low in concern. A moment of wounded silence stretched between them. He would have helped her to her futon had she asked, even old and bent as he was, but her pride would kill her first.

He bowed slowly, brush offered across both weathered palms. "As you will, Empress."

She took it and Pa silently retired for the night. Hana threw herself back into her writing, and as the characters took form they replaced the sting of her guilt.

On the parchment there were no shadows – only black on white.

And so the night passed. The winter's bite was mild, the cold a sensation easily forgotten, as was the smell of the untouched meal set beside her untold hours before. Though there was no way for her to tell the time except for the movement of the moon, she acutely felt each second bleed away. She raged back, furious strokes of ink all that she had to battle the loss, to carve out some salvation or dam the wave of crushing defeat for one more breath at least.

The candle at her side died silently, plunging all her efforts into darkness.

Hana gasped, finally feeling the winter in her lungs, and gooseflesh skittered up her arms. When had it gotten this cold?

She sighed and waited for her eyes to adjust to the darkness. There was a bit of flint somewhere on her desk that she had used to light the candle in the first place. But it took too long. Gritting her teeth against her surfacing thoughts, she ran her hands over the surface of her desk, searching slowly at first, and then faster. She found it at the edge of her reach and quickly struck it near the wick.

She felt the heat of the sparks, but could not see them, and the wick did not catch.

She struck again, and a third time, without so much as a spark. The candle's refusal to light only made her angrier and angrier. There was no wind. There was barely even any oxygen. Hana struck the flint again with all her strength and this time the stone tumbled from her hand, hitting the tatami soundlessly.

Her world was black and silent, and it wasn't just because of the candle. The light from the windows grew increasingly ashen and weary until she could see nothing of the gardens beyond the haggard haze.

"Who is there?" she challenged the mist. She felt it seep into her lungs and stay there, thick and heavy, like breathing through cotton. Instinctually, her hand slipped beneath her skirts to a holster on her leg, and with one smooth motion she cocked it and aimed it before her. "Name yourself."

The mist ignited into vibrant, living green, a color she knew all too well from her time at Shinra. As it flared, she saw it was not a mist at all. It was a river. A river of countless, dancing threads and sparks of light.

Somehow she had become immersed in the Lifestream.

"Who is there?" she demanded again. She could see her now. The mako was condensing into the form of a woman just more than an arm's length away from her.

"Name yourself!"

Slowly, the woman began to materialize. First was her robes - a shining white kimono of countless layers and innumerable sashes that swayed and sighed with the lifestream around her, creating halo of gossamer and light. Next her hair, a stream of jet black that danced lithely among her sashes. And finally, her face took form, and Hana lost her breath.

Somehow, impossibly, Hana was left staring at herself.

In shock, she fired.

She saw the shots rip through her own face and chest. It should have been deadly, but the bullets left only ripples, and the holes were repaired with one blink of the apparition's burning eyes. Perhaps it was amusement that danced there, though her face remained stone cold and level.

"I am Yukihana Kazehawa," the specter said, staring down at Hana from her full height and glory. The fact that Hana could not even stand up to meet her eye to eye irked her to no end.

"Then you are an imposter," Hana replied, aiming at the woman's breast, though she was sure that no living heart beat there.

The specter's lips turned down. "If any is the imposter, it is you, child, born with such diluted and sullied blood." Though she was already nearly within reach, she disappeared entirely only to rematerialize even closer, hovering horizontal to the floor to bring them nose to nose, identical eyes locked in combat.

Light writhed around the specter in otherworldly fury. "You are a disgrace to the Kazehawa name. You are, nevertheless, my heir."

Hana blinked, taking a moment to let her words sink in. If she was to believed, this was her ancestor and namesake. Perhaps most eerily, her doppelganger as well.

Hana lowered her gun but not her eyes. When she had pictured the first mythical empress, she had imagined her as somehow kind and gentle, maybe even motherly. The image before her was anything but.

"What do you want with me?" Hana asked, far from fearful. Though she had to be excruciatingly careful to not let the thought go far, it did cross her mind that she had dealt with one other stone cold, arrogant figure of legend before.

"There is a blight on this world," the specter said. "And unfit though you are, it seems that only you are in a position to purge it."

"I'm not inclined to do anything you say," Hana said.

"Then you will die. Everyone you love will die. The world will die."

Hana closed her eyes slowly. She knew this wouldn't end until she heard the last of it. "I will listen."

"Jenova is free in the world again."

Hearing that name, a broken voice in Hana's heart sobbed.

 _Sephiroth…._

And that was when Hana's heart stopped. She could not recover, could not meet this foe on equal ground any longer. Just thinking that name was enough to nearly cripple her with pain. Disarmed, off balance, and with no way to run, she was left with precious few options.

 _I simply won't speak of it,_ Hana thought, steeling whatever resolve she had left.

"Then don't," the specter replied harshly, and Hana was jarred at the response to her unspoken thoughts. "No one needs your words. Listen, and obey.

"Jenova is the malignancy that caused my demise. I fought with her form before, and was merely infected. Now, it is a thousand times worse. Thanks to her son and the meddling of ShinRa, she possesses the body of a god. There is no telling the suffering she can bring to mankind.

"He's not her son," Hana shot back.

"He did not exit her womb. A petty technicality. Jenova is imprinted in every cell of that man's body. He would not exist as he is without her. They are one and the same. Sephiroth is the Calamity incarnate and nothing more."

 _That's not true!_ Hana tried to scream, but her tongue was bound. The specter's voice came louder, stronger, faster, until it filled every corner of her mind and drove out every thought of resistance.

"There is no time for this weakness. You must see beyond this farce and realize what he truly is. You saw what he did for yourself. Hundreds cut down or left to burn, even his own comrade, and even _you_."

And then the specter assaulted Hana with images of that night.

 _Hana suffocated in the smoke, feeling the flames lap at her bare feet and clothes as she ran to bring the sword to her husband. She saw his form in the distance, choking the life from a guard with his bare hand. She heard the screams of the dying, some of them soldiers, but some of them bystanders, women, children. Still she danced over embers on her way to him – surely, it had been some trick of her mind! He wouldn't murder, not like this…_

 _But as she stood before him, called to him, he had snapped the neck of a second man before her very eyes and fed his dead body to the eager flames._

 _And his eyes had been alight with pleasure as he did it._

 _She had run, then, his sword hugged to her breast. He followed slowly, leisurely, smiling. When she had been backed into a corner in the garden, he had reached lazily for his blade, and she had challenged him as the truth of what was happening sunk in._

"Come and take it from me then, monster!"

 _And take it he had. He had ripped it from her grip, regardless of how his sword split her as he did. Pain…searing, rending, ripping pain, and then blackness_ …

" **Enough!"** Hana screamed, shaking. She acutely felt the scar that ran from her knee, across her body, to the opposite shoulder, the scar that had failed in ending her life, but succeeded in crippling her forever.

But the specter did not relent. "This is nothing compared to the horrors he will unleash across the world. Everyone, everything will burn. And then he will take to the stars and find other worlds. Jenova's cruelty knows no bounds. No one will be spared until life itself is snuffed from existence."

 _No! Sephiroth won't let her!_

"Sephiroth has no choice. He is already breaking. Soon Jenova will envelop his soul entirely and he will be no more."

 _Then help me_ _ **save**_ _him!_

"The boy cannot be saved. But there is yet hope for the world. One hope. It is you."

The Lifestream around them turned violent, thrashing about the specter in a vortex. Light whirred around and through Hana's body and she felt what she had prayed she would never experience again – the wrath of the touch of mako.

"Sephiroth trusts you. He can be vulnerable around you. He even feels guilt over what he did. All this will disarm him. No one else holds this power over him. That is why it must be you. You must call him to you, soothe him to rest, and then, when he is weakest—"

Hana felt something hard and cold in her hand. She could not move to explore the item further, but somehow knew that it was a knife.

"—You must kill him."

Hana screamed in rage and lunged, thrusting the knife into the face that mirrored her own.

And the world returned.

She found herself face down on the tatami, robes splayed in disarray around her, both hands clenched around the hilt of a knife whose blade was entirely buried in the floor. Her cries had brought a squadron of guards, armed and ready to defend their empress.

She did not care that her hair was tangled and disheveled and that streams of hot tears of rage still spilled down her cheeks. Her breath came through grit teeth in hysteric gasps.

"What is it, Hana?" Pa cried, hands trying to still her. "What has happened?"

"I will not!" Hana screamed so loud that her voice broke and her throat tore. _**"I WILL NOT!"**_

 _Then I will make you, stubborn child_ , came the specter's cool reply.

Later, after she had been pried from the knife and examined by the physician, Pa was able to reassure all the witnesses. Stress, they said. It was strain from losing so much and assuming the throne so soon. It was enough to quell any rumors of madness, but she was consigned to her futon until she regained her senses, unable to rise, without anything within reach to distract her from her tortured thoughts.

Rest, they had told her. But she could not. As soon as she closed her eyes to sleep, the words of her ancestor came to haunt her anew.

 _I will make you,_ the specter promised. _I will not let the world go to rot._

She could have convinced herself that it had been a delusion of her frenzied mind if the opalescent knife had not been left sitting where she could always see it on her writing desk.


End file.
